Small bag charges without cords

As a full-time social worker who spent much of her time driving to client meetings, Liz Salcedo often found herself running out of energy — on her iPhone.

Salcedo, 27, relied on her smartphone to keep in touch with clients and navigate unfamiliar areas. And when she returned home at the end of the day, she would often put her purse down without remembering to recharge her phone.

Enter the Everpurse, a lightweight zippered clutch with a dedicated pocket that keeps an iPhone charged at 50 percent or above for 24 hours under standard usage. The clutch can be carried by itself or slipped into a larger bag. The Everpurse system comes with a charging pad, roughly the length and width of a paperback, that can fully charge the special pocket in roughly six hours. Salcedo tapped two Chicago-based handbag-makers, 1154 Lill and Laudi Vidni, to produce fabric and leather versions.

Salcedo, who now works on Everpurse full time, launched a fundraising campaign Monday via the online crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to raise $100,000 by Oct. 13 for ramped-up production. By Monday evening, Everpurse had already collected more than $21,000 in pledges through Kickstarter, which specializes in fundraising for artistic and creative ventures. Chicago is the fourth-largest city for Kickstarter by number of projects.

As a six-figure fundraising campaign, Everpurse is relatively rare. Of roughly 29,000 successfully funded projects on Kickstarter to date, fewer than 300 have raised $100,000 or more. The platform uses an all-or-nothing approach, meaning projects that fail to meet their fundraising goals don't collect any money.

Salcedo said she was pleased with her campaign's kickoff.

"We have been overwhelmed by the positive response that we have gotten in the last 24 hours, and are excited to get awesome feedback from backers," she said.

Salcedo's husband, Dan, the founder and chief executive of local e-commerce startup Mobcart, helped Liz build the magnet-based charging technology for Everpurse. The fabric version will retail for $129 and the leather version will cost $159; both prices include the charging pad.